Chapter Eighteen

Solan could never remember what he and Ceridwen were talking about, after; something inconsequential and amusing, that made Ceridwen laugh until the shots cracked through the air, twisting her face into horror. He stared at her dumbly for a few seconds, his first thought that someone had set off fireworks or lit a cherry bomb, even though he’d been a soldier long enough to know gunshots when he heard them. He saw movement from the corner of his eye and started to turn towards it, feeling sluggish and snail-slow in his movements. Time sped up briefly, long enough for Ceridwen to grab him and roughly yank him down into the mouth of the stairs, behind the protection of the wall. He heard screaming somewhere down below them and thought of Kyr, who had gone down into the crowd again less than an hour earlier. Only Ceridwen’s grip on his arm, her fingers digging in so tightly he had bruises for the next week, kept him from bolting down the stairs to find Kyr. He smelled blood suddenly, heavy copper in his nose, and the tattoo on his shoulder—silent and dormant since the hillside—began to itch. He heard Ceridwen inhale sharply and followed her gaze to the other end of the balcony, struggling to move through the suddenly thick air. He expected to see Lokan dead or dying, killed just at the point of victory in twisted proof of the old woman’s prophecy. The knowledge was so sure and firm in his mind that for an instant he saw only Lokan sprawled limply against the balcony railing, violet eyes wide and staring, his heart shattered by a bullet. Ceridwen’s hand tightened again on his arm and Solan flinched at the pain, opening his eyes again to see that the blood soaking into Lokan’s clothes and spreading slowly out across the balcony’s stone floor wasn’t his. Solan yanked his arm away from Ceridwen’s grip and scrambled across the suddenly endless length of the balcony floor, dimly aware of Ceridwen following, of more screams and shouts from below, of running footsteps pounding up the stairs. He didn’t look back over his shoulder, unable to tear his gaze away from Torin lying limply, unnaturally still, across Lokan’s lap, his pale grey sweatshirt already sodden with bright blood. More blood ran from his mouth, staining his pale skin red, and he fought for each gasping, wet breath, the muscles throughout his body tense and trembling. “Tor. Torin.” Solan caught Torin’s face in both hands, biting back a whimper at the sticky heat of blood against his fingers. His vision blurred and he blinked hard, trying to catch and hold Torin’s unfocused gaze. “Look at me, please, you’re okay. Ceridwen will fix you up, just like Lokan.” He glanced up at Lokan but Lokan was looking down, his face as cold and still as stone. Kyr dropped down beside them with a heavy thump, hard enough to tear out the knees of his pants and skin the flesh beneath them. He took Torin’s hand and squeezed it tightly, his cheeks already damp with tears, his eyes dark with shock and grief. Solan looked for Ceridwen, to demand she do something to save him, and found her already there, hands pressed against Torin’s bloody chest and lit with the gentle glow of her magic. Torin’s breathing didn’t change from quick shallow gasps and his eyes didn’t lose their blankness, pupils little more than pinpricks. Solan saw Ceridwen bite her bottom lip and shake her head, the glow around her hands fading as she took them away from Torin’s chest. “The fuck are you doing?” Kyr’s voice cracked and soared to a child’s higher register on the last word. “Fucking do something.” “I can’t,” Ceridwen said gently. “He’s already dead. His body just hasn’t realized it yet.” Solan saw Lokan close his eyes briefly and looked away, gently stroking sweat-damp pale hair back from Torin’s forehead. He could hear yelling still from the courtyard, fear shading into anger, but it sounded distant and muffled. Torin’s fists clenched spasmodically closed and he took a sudden deep breath, muscles locking his body into an arch, and the last of the light faded slowly from his eyes. He slumped back and took no more breaths. Kyr was the first to move, putting both hands over his face and screaming into his palms, hunched over as though the force of his grief was pulling him into a helpless ball. His sobs tore at Solan’s heart and only seemed to worsen the nagging burning itch across his shoulder, until just moving to take Kyr in his arms hurt. Kyr pressed his hot face into Solan’s neck and clung to him like a child, fingers digging into Solan’s back just below his burning shoulderblade. Feeling numb and shellshocked, Solan watched Lokan pass a hand over Torin’s eyes, closing them, then gently give Torin’s body over to Ceridwen. Lokan pushed himself to his feet and looked down briefly at the ugly patches of blood still wet on his clothes, then moved to the railing. Ceridwen called his name but he ignored her, putting a hand on the railing and vaulting over it with easy grace. Solan watched him land on the cobbles almost hard enough to shake the ground and straighten up to his full height, towering over the people still in the courtyard. “Enough.” His voice rolled like thunder, echoing through the courtyard and freezing Fae and human alike in place, cutting off a dozen building arguments and fights as neatly as a knife. Overhead clouds scudded across the sky, temporarily obscuring the moon. When the moon returned, it cast a silver glow over Lokan where he stood holding the crowd still with just the force of his presence, and Solan saw the sudden ghostly glimmer of antlers jutting from his dark curls. “We ended it.” Lokan’s voice was quieter than the first angry shout but no less carrying. “You will not start it again because of one idiot with a grudge, like you are children with no sense. You will not make every death mean nothing.” Solan heard a murmur go through the crowd, sleepy with confusion, but he sensed that Lokan’s hold over them was weakening in the face of their fear. His shoulder throbbed and burned, and Kyr’s weight was heavy against his chest. He closed his eyes for a moment then gently pushed Kyr away and got to his feet, locking his knees against a sudden wave of dizziness. He looked at Ceridwen, still kneeling beside Torin’s body, and closed his eyes again for the comfort of the darkness behind his eyelids. “Bring him.” He opened his eyes and nodded at Torin before starting for the stairs, unconsciously hunching his painful shoulder. “Now, Ceridwen. Hurry.” He heard her move behind him and then her footsteps, with Kyr’s following behind. He led them down the stairs to the courtyard, sick with pain, and went to Lokan’s side, wtching Ceridwen carefully lay Torin’s body down again. They all watched him; Kyr exhausted and red-eyed, Ceridwen puzzled, Lokan with flat expressionless eyes. He felt the crowd staring at him, the weight of their steady gaze threatening to send him to his knees and smother him. “I’m sorry,” he said, not sure who he was apologizing to, then grabbed Lokan’s hand and yanked him down to his knees, catching Ceridwen’s hand and pressing them both to Torin’s cold, still chest. He drew power without knowing how he did it, taking everything Lokan had and boosting it with all the strength of the wild magic burning through his back and the hypnotized power of the crowd, then channelled it all through Ceridwen. She grunted and her hand, trapped against Torin’s chest by Solan’s fingers, blazed with a light so brilliant that Solan had to squeeze his eyes shut to avoid behind blinded. He felt the magic trace the path of the bullet, from the neat hole in Torin’s side through the massive damage it had caused by pinballing through his chest, to the fist-sized hole it had left beneath Torin’s shoulderblade—the same one Solan had gotten tattooed so long ago—in its exit. As the magic passed through cracked bones knitted neatly and smashed organs reformed themselves before skin and muscles drew together again to leave little more than new pink scars. Solan looked up at Lokan and saw antlers shining like glass and diamond in the moonlight. He saw the first Fae soldier—wild Fae, her face marked with blood-red scars—kneel down with her head bowed, then the second and the third, until every Fae in the courtyard knelt down to the wild king. He saw the first human join them, then the magic splintered and shattered inside him, slamming out through the tattoo and threatening to tear him apart. The pain was enormous, the weight of the whole world, but before it jerked him away from Torin to writhe and scream silently on the cobbles, he felt Torin’s heart give one unsteady thump and then another. His last thought before blackness claimed him was that it was worth it, and he only hoped the people he loved would see it the same way. He opened his eyes to the hallway of Saint Sebastienne, lit by fluorescent lights and as whole as it had been the night he’d left it, before the police had come for him. He was standing in front of the last mural Kyr had painted and he couldn’t help smiling a bit as he looked at it, reaching out to touch the little painted figures of him and Kyr standing together. “Hi,” he said, without turning from the mural. “I bet you think you’re so clever,” the old woman said, but there was no malice in her voice. “Why St. Seb?” “Why not?” She moved up beside him and put a square hand out to touch the painted grass of the field. “Am I dead?” She was silent for so long that he turned to look at her, and was surprised to find her laughing without sound. “Yes,” she said after a few moments, “but then again, no. Your heart stopped but fortunately Ceridwen still has enough juice to zap you back into life. Two resurrections in one night. Was it worth the loss of the wild magic?” “Is that a trick question?” Solan smiled. “I’d do it all over again, without hesitation.” “Even the storms?” “Yeah. Even the storms.” He glanced back at the mural, and when he looked around again she was gone, leaving him alone in the empty hall. “Thank you,” he told the air, then took a deep breath and walked straight towards the mural, squeezing his eyes shut in expectation of hitting the wall. He felt the warmth of sunlight on his face instead and cautiously opened his eyes again to find himself lying in a bed, the sun laying a band of heat across him from the window. After a moment of groggy thought he recognized the room he and Kyr had been staying in at the hotel, in the southern human town where Kyr and Torin had trained. The thought of Torin brought him out of bed, though he staggered once he was on his feet and had to balance himself on the bed until the room stopped seesawing around him. His jeans were neatly folded on the nearby chair and he pulled them on before venturing out into the hall, where Ceridwen spotted him as she was coming up the hallway and ordered him straight back to bed. He ignored her, waiting until she came close enough to give her a hug. “Everything’s... Everyone’s okay?” “Recovering, but otherwise fine.” She walked him back into the room and stood over him until he’d stripped down again and sat back in bed. “You’ve been out for a few days. How do you feel?” “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Pretty good, actually. We’re not, uh, back at war, are we?” “No.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “After that... display, I don’t think anyone had the heart to fight. A few more things to clear up and we can all be on our way home.” He smiled and hugged her again, kissing her cheek before letting her go. A knock at the door announced Kyr’s arrival and a smile lit up his face when he saw Solan awake and sitting up. Ceridwen moved away from the bed to give Kyr her spot, which Kyr promptly took, throwing his arms around Solan’s neck and hugging the breath out of him. Solan hugged him back, breathing in the scent of his hair and cologne, and when he looked up again Ceridwen had left, closing the door silently behind her. “Tor said to tell you that he’ll do your laundry for the rest of your life,” Kyr said, laughing a little. “He’s still a little out of it and his memory’s taken some damage, but Ceridwen says he should recover from that in no time. I can’t believe...” He rubbed at his eyes. “Shit, turning into a fuckin’ crybaby in my old age.” Solan took his face in both hands and kissed his forehead. “I love you. Crybaby and all. I want to see Tor, but... not right now. I think I need to sleep a bit more.” He covered a yawn, settling back into the pillows. “Stay with me?” “Like you ever need to ask.” Kyr snuggled up beside him and with the steady sound of Kyr’s breathing in his ears, Solan slipped into a deep, restful sleep.